Daily Times

The short video of a Karnataka student Muskan wearing hijab went viral and it covered miles in moments after she was heckled by over 100 male students wearing saffron scarves at PES College, Bangalore located in Karnataka state’s Mandya district, amidst the ongoing hijab row controversy. Muskan Khan wearing hijab becomes a symbol of resistance and is being generously praised globally for challenging the Hindu extremists by solely standing up to the mindless mob outside her college. After being stopped and heckled by the mob of Hindu extremists, Muskan chose to give a courageous reply as she chanted ‘Allah Hu Akbar [Allah is Great]’ to the slogans of ‘Jai Shri Ram [Victory to Lord Rama]’. The mob violently ran towards her but she was immediately taken away by the college’s principal and professors. The video spread like wildfire across the globe in a jiffy and so far, it is ruling the social media trends with different hashtags including #AllahHuAkbar, #Muskan, #HijabRow. Muslims across the world showed exemplary solidarity with the college student who set a new example of bravery. While talking to NDTV, Muskan said that she was not worried about facing the bigots alone and she would keep fighting for her right to wear the hijab. She explained that the men in the group were stopped her to enter the college because she was wearing a burqa. She added that they started shouting Jai Shri Ram and then she also started chanting Allah Hu Akbar. Muskan said that the principal and lecturers had supported and protected her.

Beyond the shadow of any doubt, the ugly face of India under BJP-RSS Hindutva ideology or Hindu supremacy is fast tearing India apart. The Hindu religious extremism in India proves that India now is a Hindu fanatic state only in which minorities have no place, space, and rights, and they are being subjugated and suppressed. They are facing harsh and perpetual persecution.

India’s fanatic regime under Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has patronized the persecution of religious minorities in India since the day it has come into power back in 2014. The flag bearer of the Hindutva ideology of incumbent India’s fanatic regime is engaged in a war against its citizens and it’s the so-called slogan of secularism stands exposed.

Beyond the shadow of any doubt, the ugly face of India under BJP-RSS Hindutva ideology or Hindu supremacy is fast tearing India apart. The Hindu religious extremism in India proves that India now is a Hindu fanatic state only in which minorities have no place, space, and rights, and they are being subjugated and suppressed.

The fanatic regime of India under the Modi Hindutva umbrella passed a controversial Citizen Amendment Bill in India in 2019 to marginalize Muslims to justify the deportation of thousands of Muslims. This bill only aimed at protecting Hindus and harassing Muslims.

Today’s India after the Muskan episode reinstates the reality that Modi’s fascist and fanatic regime. Promulgation of draconian laws only legitimizes the Hindu supremacist agenda, which is a clear violation of international human rights law.

Modi’s repressive regime supports the idea of making India a Hindu-only state.

Ironically, Hindutva ideology and activists not only target Muslims alone in India but all other religious minorities, including Christians, who are being persecuted and subjugated there. The Open Doors USA 2021 World Watch List has ranked India as globally 10th worst country to victimize or persecute Christians. The US Commission on Religious Freedom has requested the State Department to label India as a “country of particular concern”. The Modi extremist and racist regime legitimize all fanatic and radical groups like RashtriyaSwayamsevakSangh (RSS) and Bajrang Dal, who are given free hands to attack Christians as their ideology stresses that all Christians should be expelled out of India unless they agree to recant their faith. The Modi fascist regime turns a blind eye to brutal and humiliating attacks against Christians and Muslims. Around 80% of Christians living in India suffer persecution by Hindus. Hindu mobs attack Christian houses without any fear of prosecution and if the case is registered, the police arrest the complainants and force & threaten them to leave that area. Christians are treated as “untouchables” or disgusting entities and are not allowed to use health centers and share the water of the area.

In August 2019, the fascist Modi regime abrogated Article 370 of the Indian Constitution revoking the special status of Illegal Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir and commanding unprecedented crimes of atrocities through mass raping of women, killing, torturing muting media, and disappearing individuals with impunity. Kashmiris live under the reality of heavy militarization, draconian powers of Indian security forces to crush the spirit of freedom, resistance, and resilience of Kashmiris. IIOJK bleeding and their right of self-determination are snatched forcibly. A shameful history of atrocities in the Kashmir valley being committed day in and day out to denying the promised plebiscite as per UN resolutions.

Likewise, the wave of violence in India’s Sikhs farmers indicates that India has turned into a “no go area” for its minorities. The hateful political agenda or ideology of Hindutva is leaving deep implications even for the existence of India itself. Hindutva ideology wants Hindus alone to be indigenous to India so that this one social group can define what it means to be “Indian” and can exclude others from this category negating its constitution. Modi, remaking India into an authoritarian, Hindu nationalist state pushing India towards a serious crisis. The lynching vigilante anti-minorities violence in India is picking momentum at and rapid pace. The brutality, the cruelness, and vicious politics under Hindu supremacy of BJP’s blueprint for India in which people are graded and assessed according to their faith.

The Hindutva hardliners know their priorities now per BJP’s new Booklet i.e. “No Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, Kashmiris or Parsi.” Nehru’s secular India is turned now only into a quagmire of Modi’s religious fanaticism of Hindutva. The grave situation in India due to religiously motivated violence, killings, riots, lynching, enforced disappearances, rape, molestation vandalism, and targeting of vulnerable sections of society is making India a nightmare to live in under the racist doctrine of the ravages of Hindutva.

The fascist Modi regime pursuing the Nazi’s agenda which is endangering the peace and stability of South Asia. The minorities in India have awakened and revolted against India. The international community, the western world, and all international human rights organizations will have to shun their policies of appeasing India under their vested interests. The United Nation and the world community should cease their role of mute spectators over the bigot Hindutva policies of the fascist Modi regime. The Muskan’s episode in India urges the need for reorienting the existing world order based on double standards, hypocrisy, and injustice. It is our responsibility to change it with new world order based on equality and justice else the insane Hindutva policies of Modi and his fanatic followers will prove to be the last nail in the coffin of Indian polity.

Muskan episode and her daring act of rare courage have exposed Indian secularism to its limits. Never before were the divisions within Indian socio-political dispensation so vividly visible than these are now. The signs are ominous. On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln in his historic address had rightly said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” For how long can India sustain these inherent divisions, only those who live will see!

The writer is a civil servant by profession, a writer by choice and a motivational speaker by passion!